Lamera Cup: Team Lamera on pole before the 26 hours of Portimao

On the Portimao circuit, 27 cars and 119 drivers came to compete in the longest event of the season in the Lamera Cup, a 26-hour endurance event.

To get in shape and get to grips with the elevation changes and blind turns making up the impressive “Autodromo Internacional do Algarve”, the majority of the crews first got used to it during five hours of free practice divided into two sessions. One of them took place at night on Friday evening. Enough to allow the crews to remember, and for some to discover, the specificities of night driving.

At the end of the qualifications contested this Saturday late morning, the three crews competing for the overall championship and in the Elite category monopolized the first three places on the grid.

Pole position goes to Team Lamera (Couasnon, Wilfried and Matteo Merafina), Pierre Couasnon proving to be as fast as ever in the qualifying exercise. Lamera #62 is ahead of the TTM 75 team (Samarianov, Di Duca, Soave) in which Nina Samarianov, who arrived during the season, continues to combine consistency and performance.

Third, Team ETC Racing 1 (Dufour, Parsa, Ayari) once again demonstrates that it will be necessary to count on the homogeneity of its crew. An asset in such a long race. Regular host of the Elite category, Continental Racing (Fargier, Maire, Billet, Coué) is content with a start from the third row. A position behind the crew's potential. But the latter chose to focus on the racing settings from the first free practice sessions.

The performance of this qualifying session is to the credit of the Lamera M6 Turbo (car #35 – Rastoder, Orgeval, Grosset Janin, Demagalhaes, Lebigre, Tsamere-Tserdi)), 5th on the starting grid. Entered in the Gentleman category, the crew is partly made up of motorsport neophytes who won a competition organized as part of a double anniversary: ​​the 30th anniversary of the Turbo automobile show and the 10th anniversary of the Lamera Cup .

2nd and 3rd in the Gentleman category, the West Motors by ETC Racing crews (Peyrard, Mengolli, Galland, Devos) and Alma Racing-Relais Thalasso (Florac, Vachot, Pasquet, Beziau) will start from the 9th row on the grid.

In the Pro-Am category, the best performance goes to Genius Water Racing (Houben, Decnijf, Mouton, Pevenage, Verbeke), 9th on the grid. He is ahead of the AMS Propreté by CTF teams (Chris-tophe, Fabien, Tristan and Lucas Heliou) and CTF Corpoboost (Poret, Corbie, Boust, Beraud), respectively 10th and 11th on the grid.

The start of the race will be at 14:45 p.m. local time (GMT +1). The live timing allowing you to follow all the times in real time is available here: http://lamera.dataware.fr/.